Too Hot to Handle: Determining Devitrification Thresholds and Warming Rates of Reproductive Cells

María Victoria Santos is a Researcher at the National Scientific and Technical Research Council (CONICET) at IPATEC in the city of Bariloche, Argentina. She graduated as a Chemical Engineer in 2004 and in 2011 obtained her PhD in Engineering both at the National University of La Plata, Argentina.
Her area of expertise is the numerical simulation using the finite element technique of the energy transfer equation in complex, heterogeneous and irregular domains considering temperature dependent thermophysical properties (including phase-change transitions), applying these models to food engineering and cryopreservation of biological materials.
Co-author in  "Implications of storage and handling conditions on glass transition and potential devitrification of oocytes and embryos" 2014 and "In-vitro development of vitrified-warmed bovine oocytes after activation may be predicted based on mathematical modelling of cooling and warming rates during vitrification, storage and sample removal" 2018.
She has received the Senior Moulton Medal Award in 2021 given by the Institute of Chemical Engineers (IChemE) for the most meritorious scientific article published along with the co-authors Dr. Zaritzky and Dr.Pérez-Calderón.